My Ten Most Memorable Meals of 2012

If you do the basic math, we eat close to 1,100 meals in a given year – that’s three squares a day multiplied by 365 days (OK, 366 in a Leap Year). So, how to figure out the 10 best?

Of course, the food matters. But so does the setting. And the company. And the occasion. In short, I’ve never been one to think of food as this isolated thing, so my “best” meals of 2012 weren’t necessarily the best in the purest culinary sense. But they were certainly the most memorable – for reasons that often went beyond what was on the plate.

A few added caveats regarding this top 10 list: I’m hardly a world traveler, so the majority of my picks are in my home base of New York. Additionally, I’m hardly of the belief that pricier is better – if anything, I’m partial to what Guy Fieri calls the Triple D school of dining, as in “Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives.” (As for Mr. Fieri, I dined at his infamous NYC establishment, too – see here – but that experience didn’t quite make it to this list).

So, without further fanfare, here are my 10 most memorable meals of 2012:

Duck done many ways (dessert included): Nose-to-tail dining has become very big of late. But while the notion of eating every bit of an animal (including the nose and tail) seems to hold sway when we’re talking four-legged creatures (think pigs), who’s to say it can’t work with…ducks? Not Christopher Coombs. The ambitious and adventurous executive chef of Boston’s Deuxave put together an all-duck feast at New York’s James Beard House this past fall that lived up to the nose-to-tail ideal in some very provocative ways (how’s about a Reuben sandwich – in appetizer form – made with duck tongues?). Some dishes worked better than others – my favorite: a truffle soup with a duck egg – but the concept was smartly carried through till the very end, including a dessert offering of candied duck fat (don’t knock it till you’ve tried it).

A South African surprise…in Provincetown: Living in New York, I can sample most any cuisine I want on most any night – from old-school French to hipster Asian (and both of those are particularly trendy right now). But even in the Big Apple, it’s hard to find South African fare — there are a handful of places, but they always seem to fall off my radar. So imagine my surprise to discover Karoo Kafe, a very cool – and very wallet-friendly – South African joint in Cape Cod’s Provincetown, a locale better known for clam shacks and the occasional upscale eatery. Actually, it was my college-age son who found Karoo, since he was looking for a vegan-friendly option while we were on summer vacation. Karoo certainly offers that, but it also offers dishes that show the savory, spicy cuisines – in particular, Indian, Malaysian and Portuguese – that have influenced South African cooking. Naturally, I had to try Karoo’s bobotie – that’s South Africa’s national dish, a kind of meatloaf-meets-curry thing. And it was certainly the best bobotie I’ve ever had. OK, it was the only bobotie I’ve ever had, but you get the point: When you come upon a restaurant almost by chance, the element of surprise helps make the meal.

A lobster dinner, Mason-style: Another unexpected find in Cape Cod — lobsters served by Masons. By that I mean the weekly church-style lobster dinner offered by the Adams Masonic Lodge in Wellfleet. This wasn’t quite your typical church supper – for starters, it wasn’t in a church, but in an odd and old (and slightly crumbling) lodge, with the photos and documents from decades ago on the wall to give some sense of the history. And the feast wasn’t devoted to pancakes or fried fish in the familiar church-meal style. Instead, lobster was the star – well, lobster rolls, but ones prepared in the classic New England manner, which is to say there wasn’t much more than lobster meat and a hot dog bun involved. (Why get in the way of a perfectly good crustacean?) Best of all: the whole thing cost relatively nothing — $15 to be exact – and that included lots of sides and sodas and ice cream. Oh, and lots of fellowship, too – the Masons were more than happy to share their history.

Fish and chips, Manhattan (Cocktail Classic)-style: I attended plenty of fun food, wine and spirits events in the past year, but none perhaps more fun than the springtime Manhattan Cocktail Classic – one part crash course in what’s hot and happening in mixology, another part Fellini-esque weekend bash. In other words, this was an education supplemented with a certain degree of absurdity and excess. The Classic has its main showcase – hosted at the main branch of the New York Public Library — but it’s really all about the smaller side events. A noteworthy example: a British Invasion party at the rooftop of New York’s fashionable NoMad hotel, replete with a decent Beatles/Stones cover band, some seriously sip-worthy cocktails made with British gins and the best fish and chips I’ve had in a lifetime of fish-and-chips eating (and that includes a few months living in London).

Pot au crème – with friendship on the side: I’ve recently renewed a friendship with a childhood pal who’s spent a fair bit of time of late in and around the restaurant biz. On a December weekend visit to his home in suburban Philadelphia, he took me to Leila’s Bistro, a French-American eatery in Jenkintown that he helped get off the ground (he’s an engineer by trade, so he worked on the design and remodeling). “The chef is amazing,” he promised me. I was skeptical, figuring that my fried was biased and that a place so far outside a culinary “scene” could be only so good. But my friend was right: Chef Jose Vargas does honor to classic dishes and adds modern tweaks when merited. I don’t think I’ve had a better plate of duck in the past year, including my all-duck dinner above. But the real treat was the dessert – a simple, sinful butterscotch pot au crème, the kind of old-fashioned meal-ender that’s primed for a comeback. Enjoying it with an old friend-turned-new friend made it all the better.

Spicy soup – and a sendoff: I’ve had many fine meals in the past year at Grand Sichuan, a Chinese restaurant in New York’s Chelsea section (my nabe) that’s devoted to the fiery cuisine of its namesake region. But the one that stood out involved a small group of friends honoring one of our own a couple of weeks before his summer wedding. It was a bachelor party without the trappings of one – and it was a night made for sharing the spicy fish soup that is one of the restaurant’s specialties. Actually, “spicy” isn’t quite the right word – true Szechuan cuisine makes use of a peppercorn that leaves your mouth tingling and gives you a kind of gustatory buzz. Add a few beers and you have a grand marital sendoff.

A last supper (before the lights went out): Another memorable meal in Chelsea, but for altogether different reasons. With Superstorm Sandy finally seeming to die down, I headed with the family to our beloved local diner, Chelsea Square, for a hot meal to restore body and soul. The restaurant had stayed open through the worst of the weather earlier in the day – it’s a round-the-clock joint — so we figured we’d be in the clear. But just as we were beginning our meal, the lights went out through all of Lower Manhattan. It was as if everyone in the diner — patrons and servers alike — suddenly realized just how “real” this storm was. Chelsea Square stayed closed until power was restored to the neighborhood about a week later. I don’t think I was ever happier to return to a place.

A last supper (at Chick-fil-A): Normally, I don’t like to mix my politics with my food. But when Chick-fil-A President Dan Cathy grabbed headlines this summer for his opposition to gay marriage, I found myself facing a dilemma: Do I support a quality chain that I love or do I put my support for marriage equality above it? I opted for the latter, but not before a memorable last supper at the nearest Chick-fil-A. To be honest, I’m still missing those waffle fries a few months later.

All-you-can-eat in Vegas – the gourmet way: By virtue of its ability to attract a significant number of celebrity chefs, Las Vegas has become a go-to foodie destination. So perhaps it’s no surprise that one of the Vegas hotels would get around to putting a foodie spin on that tired gambling-Mecca staple of the all-you-can-eat buffet. But even I was astonished at the quality and variety at The Wicked Spoon – a buffet that captures the gourmet zeitgest in all its odd and delicious glory and that fits within the cheekily contemporary setting of The Cosmpolitan (as in the hotel that runs all those bizarro ads). As I noted here, you know you’re not at your standard Vegas trough when you’re supping on General Tso’s pig tails (yes, pig tails in place of chicken), Mexican “risotto” with corn and chiles and a smoked trout salad with frisee.

A poolside feast with the Coppolas: Well, I can’t say that Francis Ford Coppola, the filmmaker-turned-winemaker, or his director daughter Sofia joined me when I visited the Coppola Winery in Sonoma County, Calif., this summer. But no matter: I enjoyed a lazy lunch with a fresh-baked pizza, an overstuffed muffaletta (the classic New Orleans version of an Italian hero) and, of course, wine. The food was good and hearty, but it was the overall setting – Coppola has designed his self-described “wine wonderland” to be something of a Northern Californian interpretation of a Godfather-inspired palazzo – that made everything taste better. The mountain views, the pool (I took a pre-lunch dip), the bocce court – it was over-the-top in just the right way. And it was a potent reminder that a great meal is a feast for all the senses.

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